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Andy Murray battled back from a set down and survived three match points to claim a dramatic tie-break victory over Lorenzo Sonego at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open in Doha.
Murray, a wildcard for the ATP 250 tournament, claimed a 4-6 6-1 7-6 (7-4) in his first competitive appearance since his impressive run at last month’s Australian Open.
The former world No 1 made a double-fault to hand Sonego the opening service game of the match, helping the Italian claim the opening set, although Murray responded to break twice in the next to take the last-32 clash to a final-set decider.
Murray survived three match points to hold serve in the tenth game and took the game to a tie-break, where he battled back from losing the opening three points to snatch a 7-4 victory and secure his spot in the second round.
“It was really tough,” said Murray post-match. “We never played together, or practised with each other before, so I didn’t know exactly how the match was going to go and it took a while to get used to his game.
“He’s a very aggressive player, takes a lot of chances, but it’s high-risk tennis. He rolled the dice at the end, and it looked like he had the momentum. But thankfully in the mid-part of that tie-break he made a couple of mistakes and I managed to turn it around.”
Murray’s victory is the second tournament in a row where he has needed a final-set tie-break to progress through the opening round, having saved a match point to defeat Matteo Berrettini to start his Australian Open campaign.
Andy Murray was eventually knocked out during the third round of the Australian Open
The 35-year-old will now face former Olympic gold medallist and fourth seed Alexander Zverev – who received a bye through the first round – in the last-16 on Wednesday.
Fellow Briton Liam Broady also came through a final-set tie-break against Ukrainian Oleksii Krutykh to win 6-0 4-6 7-6 (7-2), setting up a second-round clash with former US Open champion Daniil Medvedev.
Sixth seed Dan Evans begins his singles campaign against Finland’s Emil Ruusuvuouri on Tuesday, having partnered Jonny O’Mara to a 6-5 7-5 10-7 victory over Ilya Ivashka and Andrey Rublev in the opening round of the doubles.
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